The weekend of the 29th and 30th November promises to be a good one. The ME5 album (our fifth annual download compilation of Medway music) is in the can and ready for digital release at midnight on Friday 29th November, all 58 tracks of it, and the Just Giving page for donations to Young Minds is under construction. For reasons we’ll come to in a minute, we thought a five year run was worth celebrating with a more than one event, so think of the weekend as a mini-festival.

On Friday 29th November you will have two choices: You can come to the Nag’s Head in Rochester to see Broken Banjo, The Flying Isaacs and The Flowing, or you can go to St Mary’s Social Club in Gillingham to hear acoustic sets by Theatre Royal and Wildfowl plus some open mic performances.

On Saturday 30th we’ll be at the Barge in Gillingham for performances by Balance Lost, Natalie Evans and Chris ‘Arfur’ Allen for a gig that will serve not only as an after launch party for the ME5 album, but also as a ‘goodnight and thank you’ from Medway Eyes. Not only will ME5 be the last album we put out, this will also be the last ever Medway Eyes event. We’ve achieved a lot along the way, but five years is a long enough run for a good idea and it’s time to pursue other things.

As you probably know, we like to put out a compilation album each year. The aim is simple – to promote local music hard whilst doing what we can for a good cause. This year we’re doing it again. We’ll be releasing ME5 as a free download only album, but you’ll be encouraged to donate to our nominated charity when you download. This year that charity is Young Minds. We’ll be releasing the album at midnight on Friday 29th November and staging three gigs over that weekend to mark the album’s release, but more about that later.

We would love it if as many bands and artists as possible from in and around Medway could contribute a track. All you need to do is send an mp3 at 192Kbps to us at medwayeyes@gmail.com, properly tagged. When you do this, it will be assumed that you have full rights to the music. Medway Eyes will not be liable for any unlawful distribution. That’s it. So, whether it’s a track from your last album, a bedroom demo, an outtake or a live recording, we’d love you to share with us and help us spread the word and do good. Of course, it promotes you too.

All submissions need to be with us by no later than midnight on Saturday 9th November, and we reserve the right to refuse submissions if they are technically flawed, if we think there may be copyright issues, or if … and we know this is subjective — we don’t think you’ve checked any of our last four albums and thought about whether your submission would be in kindred company. Oh, and try not to send us songs with the the word “fuck” in. We want the Flanders family to donate.

We’re not writing to individuals this time because we can’t get the staff, so please spread the word.

Following the roaring success of Homespun, we’re delighted to be contributing to another inaugural independent Medway festival. This one is called Medway Visions, and it’s the brainchild of film maker Mr Young. It runs for a week from 7th September and includes a new film, ‘Shaking The Sky’ from Mr Young, animated shorts, horror-comedy, a documentary by Dave Wise and special screenings by the Rochester Film Society. For full details, see the Creatabot website.

We’re running one branch of all this – the gig you see posted above. Stuart Turner and The Flat Earth Society are soon to launch their third album and have commissioned videos for every song. They’ll be showing all of these as well as playing a live set at the Nag’s Head on Saturday 7th, supported by a live solo performance from Crybaby Special and videos from Tape Error.